Competition
format

The taekwondo competition at the Olympic Games consists of a single elimination tournament. Change has
been made as the IOC decided to award two bronze medals in the
Beijing 2008 Olympics. However, the repechage system will be maintained and the
difference will be that both winners of the respective repechage
matches will receive a bronze medal. [1]

Controversies

Result
overturning

On August 23 the quarterfinal match in the Women's +67 kg between Sarah Stevenson
of Great Britain and China's Chen Zhong, the defending gold medalist from
Sydney and Athens, was plagued with controversy. Chen Zhong had led
1-0 through most of the match but 4 seconds before the end,
Stevenson landed a clear strike to the face of her opponent.
However, only half the judges recorded the hit and thus was not
registered, dashing Stevenson's Olympic hopes of gaining her the
two points that would have secured her a quick victory. Stevenson's
coach was furious and protested to the referee and judges, but
initially Zhong was awarded the match. The British team protested
for over an hour and on seeing the clear video footage of the
strike to the face, unprecedently in the sport of Taekwondo, the
judges decision was repealed and it was Stevenson who went through
to the semi-finals against the Mexican Maria del
Rosario Espinoza.[1] Espinoza
however, with a , secured a clear victory over the unprepared
Stevenson and went on to win gold, whilst Stevenson took bronze in
the bronze medal match against the Egyptian Noha Abd Rabo.

On announcing the change of result in the quarter final, the
tournament director said:

“

The competition
supervisory board has looked into this matter deeply, has made
video analysis which has been open to all the referees and judges.
In applying paragraph two of page 64 of the competition rules of
the World Taekwondo Federation we have to change this result and we
have to declare the British player as winner. "We are very sorry to
the spectators of China but justice is first. Thank you for
understanding.

”

Match-fixing allegations

Canadian medal hopeful, Ivett Gonda, lost 2-0 to Sweden's Hanna
Zajc on the first day of competition despite Ivett's visible
domination of the match. Her coach speculated that it is possible
that the judge's scoring machines were possibly broken, he also
speculated that another reason could be that the Chinese judge
wanted to prevent Gonda from facing the Chinese competitor in the
next round (who later easily beat Zajc on her way to the
medal).

A protest was sent out and was subsequently denied. Many
coaches, not only the Canadian coach, were shocked at the loss.
[3]

Referee
assault

The bronze medal match in the men's 80+ kg class saw Cuban gold
medallist from Sydney in 2000 Angel Matos against
Kazakhstan's Arman Chilmanov.[4]
After he incurred an injury in the fight (at which point he led the
match 3-2), he subsequently took a Kyeshi.[4]
Under World Taekwondo Federation
tournament rules players sustaining injury are allowed one minute
of Kyeshi time, at the end of which the competitor in question must
return to the center of the ring to resume the fight or request
further time, or else forfeit the match.[5]Swedish referee Chakir Chelbat
gave a time warning at 40 seconds, but Kyeshi elapsed without Matos
returning to the center.[4]
The referee ruled while he was sitting awaiting medical attention
that he had taken too long during his time out and subsequently
disqualified him.[4]
"To me it was obvious he was unable to continue," his opponent Arman Chilmanov
of Kazakhstan said. "His toe on his left foot was broken."[6] After
Chilmanov was declared the winner, Matos briefly argued and then
delivered a kick to the face of the referee, drawing blood from the
referee's mouth, then pushed or punched a judge and spat on the
arena floor.[7][8][9] Given
alleged poor judging during the Olympics, which left many
competitors raging in injustice, the crowd watching the event
chanted "Cuba" and applauded him and his coach.[10]

Matos' coach Leudis González said of the referee's initial
decision to end the fight, "He was too strict...".[7]

A statement released by the World Taekwondo Federation
referred to the incident as a "strong violation of the spirit of
taekwondo and the Olympic Games," ordered all reports of his
participation in the 2008 Olympics to be struck from the records,
and imposed a lifetime ban preventing him and his coach, González,
from participation in any future World Taekwondo Federation
events.[8][11][12]

Fidel Castro defended Angel Matos by saying Angel Matos was
rightfully indignant over his disqualification from the
bronze-medal match. "I saw when the judges blatantly stole fights
from two Cuban boxers in the semifinals," Castro wrote. "Our
fighters ... had hopes of winning, despite the judges, but it was
useless. They were condemned beforehand."[13]

Allegations of
mismanagement and intimidation

An incident in the men's 80 kg competition may prove to have a
more lasting impact on the sport. American Steven Lopez, the
two-time defending gold medalist in that class who had not lost a
match since 2002, had one point taken away by the referee in the
third period of his quarterfinal match against Italy's Mauro
Sarmiento. The referee determined that Lopez had used an
illegal "cut kick" (blocked an opponent's blow below the waist).
The deduction turned Lopez' 2–1 lead to a 1–1 tie, and Lopez lost
in sudden-death overtime. USA coach Herb Perez unsuccessfully
protested the decision, asserting that Lopez had raised his left
leg in defense and Sarmiento had kicked into the leg in an attempt
to draw the deduction.

He claimed that the protest was not properly handled.
Typically, decisions on protests must be made within 15 minutes. No
response was made for 45 minutes.

He also stated that the US team received no indication why the
protest was deemed "unacceptable". According to Perez,
"Unacceptable could mean anything from we didn’t file the papers
properly to we didn’t use the right color pencil… Under the WTF
competition rules, we should have been notified about the decision,
the criteria, the methodology used, what evidence was presented,
and what referees were reviewing it. We were not.”

Perez also said that at a June 2008 conference, the heads of
the 25 teams that were to compete in Beijing were asked to sign an
agreement not to file any protests at the Games.

After his protest was denied, Perez alleged that WTF officials
approached him and asked him not to talk to the press.

Charles Robinson, a writer for Yahoo! Sports in the US, called the events
surrounding Lopez' match "a chaotic episode that might ultimately
prove to be the tipping point to Olympic doom," adding that it had
been widely rumored that taekwondo was on the brink of being
removed from the Olympic program.[14]